Aidan—who knew Ian quite well in his Scottish person—had never seen him in purely Mohawk form before. He made a small whoof noise, awed. Jamie hid a smile, picking up his own dirk and the oilstone on which to sharpen it.
“Ach, Ian,” he said, suddenly noting his nephew’s bare chest. “D’ye maybe ken where my claw’s gone? The bear claw the Tuscarora gave me, I mean.” He hadn’t thought of the thing in years. He’d lent it to Ian some time back, to wear on a hunting trip. But it maybe wouldn’t be a bad thing to have with him just now, if it was handy.
“Aye, I do.” Ian had sat down to fold up Aidan’s cartridges, quick and neat, and didn’t look up. “I gave it to my cousin William.”
“Your cou— Oh.” He considered Ian, who still didn’t look up. “And when was this?”
“Ach. Some time ago,” Ian said airily. “When I got him out o’ the swamp, ken. I told him ye wanted him to have it.” He did glance up then, one thin eyebrow raised, just like his father. “I wasna wrong, was I?”
“No,” Jamie said, feeling a sudden warmth, though the hairs prickled on his neck. “No, ye weren’t.”
Bluebell, who’d been nosing round the back door, suddenly turned and shot toward the front of the house, barking. A chorus of deep-voiced baying answered her from the bottom of the slope before the house.
“That’ll be Gillebride, then,” Jamie said, and sheathed his dirk. “Are we fettled, lads?”
I’D GOT AMY’S stays off, and her skirt. The skirt wasn’t torn; it would do, with washing. Amy had no daughter who might use it, but there was always need of clothes and cloth. Someone on the Ridge would welcome it. I put it aside to wash later. The stays were badly torn at the shoulder and stiff with blood. I put them to the other side; I’d salvage the tin ribs, then put the fabric in the fire. The shift … that was torn, too, though it might be mended, or used for patching or quilting. I couldn’t see her buried in it, though; it was bloody and befouled. She had on only one light petticoat and her stockings—wash those, then, and …
I heard the baying of Gillebride’s dogs in the near distance, and the thunder of Bluebell’s feet as she raced down the hall to meet them. They should be all right together; the MacMillan dogs were both male. Bluey was a female and not in heat, and as Jamie had told me in a wry moment, dogs don’t bite bitches.
“Doesna always work the other way round, mind,” he’d said, and I didn’t quite smile at the memory, but felt the air press less heavily on me for a moment.
Then I heard a step in the hallway and looked up, thinking it was Gillebride. It wasn’t, and the air suddenly thickened in my chest.
“Mrs. Fraser.” It was the tall black figure of Mrs. Cunningham, bony and stern as the Grim Reaper, with a folded cloth over one arm. She hovered awkwardly on the threshold, and I just as awkwardly motioned her in.
“Mrs. Cunningham,” I said, and stopped, not knowing what the hell else to say to her. She cleared her throat, glanced at Amy’s half-clad corpse, then quickly away. Even though the head was covered, the mangled arm and shoulder were in plain sight, cracked and shattered bones showing sharp through the still flesh.
“I was by the creek. Your grandson passed me on his way to MacMillan’s and told me what was a-do. So I went along to Mr. Higgins and asked for his wife’s shroud.” She lifted the cloth slightly in illustration, and I saw the embroidered edges, done in greens, blues, and pinks.
“Oh.” That Amy would have her shroud already prepared hadn’t occurred to me at all—though it should have. “Er … thank you, Mrs. Cunningham. That was very thoughtful of you.”
She lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug and, taking a visibly deep breath, walked up to the table. She looked the situation over deliberately for a moment, exhaled through her nose, then reached to untie the ribbon of Amy’s shift.
“If ye’ll hold her steady, I’ll roll it down.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I didn’t need help, but then shut it again. I did, and plainly she’d had some experience of laying out the dead; any woman of her age would. We rolled the shift off Amy’s shoulders and I got one hand solidly into the bare right oxter, the damp hair there feeling disconcertingly warm and alive, and then, with an uncontrollable sense of squirm, threaded my fingers under the wet mess of the left shoulder, finding enough to grip.
So close, the odor of the bear on her was strong enough that I felt an atavistic shiver down my spine. Mrs. Cunningham did, too; she was breathing audibly through her mouth. She got the petticoat untied, though, and pulled shift and stockings off with steady hands.
“Well, then,” she said, and looking round saw that I’d put the skirt aside to wash, and added the rest of the clothes to the pile. “When the other women come, we’ll have them launder those at once,” she said, in the tone of one accustomed to give orders and have them obeyed. “We’ll not want the smell of …”
“Yes,” I said, with a perceptible edge that made her glance sharply at me. “Right now, we’ll need to clean her. Will you go into the kitchen and fetch a bucket of hot water? I’ll tear that up”—nodding at the worn-thin sheet Brianna had brought—“for binding strips.”
She compressed her lips, but in a way that suggested grim amusement at my feeble attempt to exert authority rather than offense, and left without a word.
There was a good bit of barking out front, and I heard Gillebride—his name meant “Oystercatcher,” he’d told me—calling to the dogs. I ripped the worn sheet into wide bands; we’d fasten her legs together, and her arms at her sides—insofar as was possible; I eyed the left shoulder dubiously—cloth binding her body into seemliness before we braided her hair and put her into her shroud.
Mrs. Cunningham reappeared with her sleeves rolled up, a bucket of steaming water from the cauldron in one hand and a hammer in the other, a quilt from my bed over her arm.
“There’ll be men coming to and fro in a moment’s time,” she said, with a jerk of her head toward the hallway.
“Ah,” I said. I would have closed the surgery door, save that there wasn’t one yet. She nodded, set down the bucket, took a handful of tenpenny nails from her pocket, and hung the quilt over the open doorway with a few sharp raps of the hammer.
There was plenty of light coming in at the big window, but the quilt seemed somehow to muffle both light and sound, casting the room into something like a state of reverence, despite the growing noises outside. I took a handful of dried lavender and rubbed it into the hot water, then tore sweet basil leaves and mint and tossed them in as well. To my slight surprise, Mrs. Cunningham looked over the jars on my shelves, took down the salt, and threw a small handful into the water.
“To wash away sin,” she informed me crisply, seeing my look. “And keep her ghost from walking.”
I nodded mechanically at this, feeling as though she’d dropped a pebble into the small pool of calmness I was hoarding, sending ripples of uneasiness through me.
We managed the cleansing and binding of the body in silence. She moved with a sure touch, and we worked surprisingly well together, each conscious of the other’s movements, reaching to do what was needed without being asked. Then we reached the head.